Computers are having a growing impact in many areas of society. The lowering costs, increasing performance capability and increasing access to networks, for example, the Internet, is allowing computers to be used more easily and effectively. Further, many of today's computers enable applications and capabilities to be added to (i.e., loaded onto) computers by end users.
Although access to networks and the ability to add applications and capabilities to a computer has many well-known benefits, such access and ability sometimes can be detrimental.
For example, many households include personal computers to which children have access. Although the Internet and other networks make available a wealth of content (i.e., information), many parents do not wish all of this content (e.g., adult content) to be available to their children. However, there is often nothing to prevent a child from accessing adult content on the Internet or another network.
Further, a growing problem in the workplace is that employees are wasting time exploring the Internet (i.e., “surfing the net”). A similar problem exists in classrooms that provide Internet access, where students refrain from taking notes or paying attention to a lecture so that they may explore the Internet. In addition, students frequently are found in the classroom—or workers in the workplace—playing games or playing videos or music that came pre-loaded on their computers or that they loaded on to their computers. Yet another situation in which it is not desirable for students to have access to at least some content on an accessible network and/or and on their own computers is when a computer is being used by the student to take an exam.
As used herein, an “examination” or “exam” is a process that includes a set of one or more questions being asked, either orally or in writing, and may include receiving, either orally or in writing, a response to one or more of the questions.
As used herein, “taking an examination” or “taking an exam” includes being posed a set of one or more questions either orally or in writing, as part of an exam, and may include providing a response, either orally or in writing, to one or more of the questions.
The role of computers in education is growing. An increasing number of students, starting at increasingly younger ages, are exposed to computers and use them in preparing school work. This preparation may include, among other activities, on-line research over the Internet, preparation of projects, preparation of written reports and use of learning exercises.
In many colleges (or universities), for entering freshmen and other classes of students, having access to a computer, particularly a laptop, is either a requirement or practically a necessity. To satisfy this growing need, colleges often have programs by which students can purchase or lease laptop computers at favorable rates. Many college campuses are updating their networking infrastructures to provide students with continuous and uninterrupted access to the college's local network and to the Internet.
Many professors are integrating their students' use of computers with the professors' classroom materials. For example, materials presented by a professor as part of teaching a course may be available on-line, for example, on the college's local network, and students typically can communicate with the professor via e-mail. This integration is occurring across a variety of disciplines, but is not confined merely to the science and engineering disciplines.
Computers and the software tools that run on them are affecting the way students prepare their work. A student typically takes advantage of the word-processing capabilities provided by computers and software tools to prepare written class work (i.e. a writing), for example, a paper, an essay, a thesis, written answers to part of a homework assignment, or a written part of a class project. The flexibility provided by many of today's word processing programs enables a student to fine-tune a writing by adding, rearranging and refining the writing's content (e.g., deleting, copying, cutting and pasting) until the writing is completed. A student may use this flexibility to prepare a writing by initially compiling a rough draft, knowing that rearrangement and refinement can readily be accomplished using the word processing program. Thus, typically, a writing submitted to the professor (or often an assistant of the professor) is not merely the student's first (and only) draft, but a product of the student reviewing and revising the first draft to produce the completed writing.
Notwithstanding the fact that computers appear firmly entrenched in a student's preparation of course work, there remains at least one area of school education where computers are not welcome. Even with their pervasive use, computers typically are barred from the examination (exam) room. A student may take notes in class on his laptop computer, communicate with the professor via e-mail, prepare writings using the computer, submit these writings via e-mail, and even receive a grade on the writing via-email from the professor; however, for exams (e.g., a midterm or a final exam), students often are confronted with a sign that reads something like: PLEASE CHECK YOUR LAPTOP COMPUTER AT THE DOOR. Thus, students typically are not allowed to use their laptops or any other computer to take an exam.
As a result, a student that may be conditioned and comfortable with expressing her thoughts in a rough draft using a computer, knowing that she can rearrange and refine the rough draft later, no longer has this ability at exam time. Under pressure and in handwriting, the student must prepare a coherent, well-organized and legible response to an exam question, frequently in an infamous “blue book.”
The grader (professor or assistant) of the exams also suffers from the banning of laptops from the exam room. From the grader's perspective, after being able to read writings submitted electronically (e.g., via e-mail) throughout the semester, where each writing reflects a respective student's capabilities in the subject matter of the course, the grader must now plow through a stack of handwritten exam answers, many of which may be barely legible or completely illegible. As many graders acknowledge, the penmanship of students is deteriorating, most likely due to the more frequent use of a keyboard as opposed to handwriting to prepare writings, including communicating with other people (e.g., email), taking notes in class and preparing writings for classes. This poor penmanship compounds the difficulty of grading handwritten answers to exam questions.
Restricting laptop computers from exam rooms stems from the fear that during the exam students will have access to unauthorized content on the computer (or by using the computer to access unauthorized content on a network), and that this content will assist the student in taking the exam. In other words, there is a fear that students will cheat during the exam by accessing unauthorized content to assist them in providing answers to the exam questions. Content is unauthorized if the individual giving the exam (e.g., a professor) does not authorize the content for use by the student during the exam. In many circumstances, the risk and ease of cheating is so great that school administrators do not allow student laptops or other computers into the exam room for fear that cheating will become rampant.
Today, it appears that the use of computers in the classroom will continue to grow. Thus, restricting computers from the exam room should be addressed. Not being able to use a computer in the exam room may be deemed unfair or undesirable by both the students and the graders. For the reasons described above, by restricting a student from using a computer to take an exam, thereby forcing a student to handwrite answers, a student's knowledge and understanding of the material taught during the semester may not be determined accurately.
Accordingly, to allow students to use their computers during an exam and to prevent cheating by students, there is needed a technique for securing a variety of types of computers, for example, a laptop, or a personal computer or a workstation found in a computer lab so that unauthorized content may not be accessed during the exam.
More specifically, needed is a technique for securely executing an application, such as an application for receiving answers from a user to exam questions, on computers such that unauthorized content cannot be accessed during execution of the exam, so that a student's computer may be transformed into a secure exam-taking environment. Being able to transform any of a variety of types of computers into a secure exam-taking environment may be desirable to eliminate the need for dedicated exam-taking computers.